Month: March 2014

By Amar Yumnam

“Das Gute, dieser Satz steht fest, ist stets das Bose, was man lasset”. This is what Wilhelm Busch said meaning that not doing the bad amounts to goodness. Busch was a powerful satirist in the later part of nineteenth century Germany. This is quoted in an article in the Ecological Economics, I have just read, of Manfred Max-Neef titled “The good is the bad that we don’t do. Economic crimes against humanity: A proposal”. Max-Neef is a former Vice Chancellor of Universidad Austral de Chile and now Director of the Economics Institute.

Max-Neef has been a powerful exponent of the need for a reorientation of Economics as well as the development policies in the developing countries. While in the latest article he emphasises the necessity for discontinuing doing the bad, something like this approach needs, I feel, to be done in the context of governance in this country. The issues of corruption and governance have been the biggest issues in recent years in this country. The forthcoming parliamentary elections too are being fought mainly on these issues. The talks of women-empowerment and caring for the downtrodden by Rahul Gandhi have failed to appeal to the electorate of the country. Rather the articulations on corruption and governance of the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party have caught the imagination of the people in the country.

At this juncture, the country needs to doubly ponder why the talk of the important agenda of empowerment of women and improving the livelihood of the poor are not as appealing to the populace as those of corruption and governance. We have history of the development experience and the effectiveness or rather otherwise on the delivery of development programmes since the beginning of planning in this country. The continuous lapses on the delivery front of development programmes have been the unexpressed grudge of the people for long but with little opportunity for assertion of the feelings by the population. The big exposures on corruption scams in recent years and the large scale exposure on crony capitalism wherein a few closed to the government became strikingly rich within short periods have definitely played a role in the new articulations and new political winds blowing in this country. In the latest issue of The Economist, corruption in India is given as the cause of the decline in recent growth performance and worsening relationship between private sector and the state: “Corruption produces bad decisions; concern over corruption produces indecision. Graft does not function, as some claim that it does elsewhere, as an unseemly but expedient market solution to inert bureaucracy, greasing the seized-up wheels of industry. It has put grit in those wheels. Loans to industries with graft problems have infected the largely-state-run banking syste; at least a tenth of its loans are sour. Inept cronies have messed up vital road and power projects. Mines and other assets lie idle as courts dither over how crooked their owners are……Few senior people go to jail; but officials fear being accused of malfeasance, so many think the safest course of action is to make no decisions at all”.  

Now why crony capitalism became a characteristic of the Indian Polity? This is where we should be finding the cause of the disease. In order to dig into this, we need to define two things – one is cause and another is interest. In usual discussions, we usually treat the two as synonymous. We thought doing something in the national interest is the same as performing something for the cause of the nation. But we can no longer treat these two as synonymous. The synonymous treatment of the two over the decades has been exploited as convenient frame for the emergence of crony capitalism in this country. Further the imperative for serving the cause has been made subservient to serving the interests. Unfortunately the cause and the interest here belong to different entities. While everything of the development interventions has been meant to serve the cause of the nation and the cause of the people, the interests have been all for the powers that be and those who are close to them. The cause of the country and the people and the interests have parted ways to such an extent that the cause easily became a sacrificial component in functioning while the interests could in no case be compromised.  This has been allowed to continue far too long and has reached the limit.

The forthcoming parliamentary elections give the people of the country an opportunity to define in clear terms the two concepts of cause and interest in the Indian context. We have to decide as ultimate determinants of state power as to whether we stand for the cause of the land and people or we stand for personal interests. If we opt for the first the outcome of interventions would be widely shared. On the other hand, if we opt for the later, the result of the development interventions would be monopolised by a few as so far. While serving the interests cannot attend to the purposes of the cause, serving the cause can accommodate the interest of all. Now is the moment to decide which one we stand for collectively in this democracy.  

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/03/cause-vs-interests-cause-and-interests-and-only-interests-and-no-cause-the-issues-facing-the-country-today/

By B.G. Verghese

Preoccupation with trivia over the forthcoming Indian elections, where tamasha has largely replaced serious and meaningful electoral debate, has deflected media attention from unfolding developments in Crimea.  The Crimean peninsulawas always culturally and demographically Russian and home to its strategic Black Sea Fleet. But it became part of Ukraine in 1991 on the basis of the then administrative boundaries when the Soviet Union broke up.

Latterly, with that country facing an economic crisis and the West encouraging Ukraine to join the European Union, the pro-Russian President of the Ukraine, Yunukovych, was overthrown by a Western-aided movement for regime change. Alarmed by this attempt further to unbalance Russia strategically and economically by extending NATOs tentacles deep into Russia’s Eurasian heartland, Putin struck. Crimea was militarily occupied and a referendum conducted that voted for reunion with Russia. The West has threatened sanctions and a new cold war looms on the horizon.

The West may huff and puff but its own policies in erstwhile Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan have been self-serving. Russia is seeking to build a Eurasian Economic Union to rebuild its strategic and economic clout as a counterpoise to the European Union.  The West sees this as restoring the Soviet Union in another guise and is out to prevent any such consummation. India understands Russia’s interest in Crimea and has pleaded for diplomatic rather than more muscular responses. This country has strong reason to want to have Russia as a strategic counterweight against US unilateralism, often dressed up as upholding democracy and righteousness.

This American tendency to press its own interests in the guise of some higher principle of freedom and fair competition is evident in its recent onslaught on Indian pharma competitors. US firms would like to make marginally incremental changes in molecules earlier developed bythem to claim new patents and thereby keep out competition, especially from developing counties like India that have been able to make similar formulations at a fraction of the monopoly price of the original vendor to the enormous benefit of poor patients in the Third World and among less affluent sections of society elsewhere. India is acting within the WTO parameters for TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) and is not in violation of international norms.

The same unilateralism is to be seen in the Anglo-US led effort to discipline Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on March 28 through a resolution calling for the establishment of what the British Foreign Secretary calls an “international mechanism” to address past violations of international law “and secure meaningful progress on a political settlement, accountability, human rights and reconciliation”.  

On the same day that the British Foreign Secretary wrote this article in the Hindu (March 17), the same newspaper carried an article by John Vidal from the Guardian. Vidal reported the setting up of a committee by HMG to see whether it is feasible to resettle 1000 (to 5000)Chagos Islanders who were expelled from the archipelago some half-century ago to lease the largest island, Diego Garcia, to the US as a strategic air, naval and submarine base from where the Americans have fought major illegal wars in an effort to bomb and bludgeon Indo-China, Iraq, Afghanistan and others to submission. The deceit and deception underpinning these wars make a disgraceful story.

The forced and crude expulsion of the Chagos Islanders was an illegal act of cultural genocide and found to be so but continues to be defended on the most callous, absurd and dishonest grounds. To prevent the right of return of the Chagossians, the Islands were declared a precious ecological and marine reserve in 2010 that would sink were the native population to return even as 5000 US military personnel live there and B-52 bombers thunder down runways.  If returning Chagossians fish in the archipelago’s clear waters this could endanger the species, but the US military is licenced to catch 50 tonnes of fish for sport! The utter hypocrisy and humbug of its all!  And these are the people preaching virtue to Sri Lanka and others. This is not to defend any wrongdoing by Sri Lanka or anybody else, but to argue for elementary standards of decency and integrity in international relations and in defending something as precious as human rights.  

Meanwhile at home, the nomination of candidates for the elections, across parties, has degenerated into the rounding up of criminals, thugs and dubious party hoppers on all sides. Small cabals are in charge of ticket distribution and old loyalties have ceased to matter. The BJP has treated Advani and Jaswant Singh badly through opaque selection procedures. It was strange to see NarendraModi’s nomination from Varanasi delayed until the last and then to find him nominated from a second seat in Vadodara. Contesting from two seats may be legal but is a questionable practice. What is the man seeking? Insurance? And should he win from both seats, he must sacrifice one. Advani too wanted to abandon his Gandhinagar seat in favour of Bhopal. What is he afraid of? Neither Modi nor Advani, like Mulayam,is interested in representing a constituency but wish only to ensure his own victory.  These are hollow men. The Congress eyeing the Ordinance route to announce anational women’s university to be set up in Rae Bareli, Sonia Gandhi’s constituency and to be named after Indira Gandhi,marks another new low in small time politics. Why now?

Finally, much was sought to be made of the leaked First Part of the Henderson-Brooks Report on the 1962 fiasco. This is by now old hat though the Defence Ministry is pretending to defend some great strategic secret by keeping the rest of it under wraps! There is nothing to hide other than the shame of supreme political folly. When will we ever learn?

www.bgvrghese.com

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/03/double-talk-double-dealing/